The snoop state’s still alive and well (Anybody notice?)

The new year starts on a sour note after Obama extends government wireless wiretapping for another five years — and the public reacts with a big yawn.

(Credit: National Security Agency/Getty Images)

In mid-December, a good portion of our wired world had a collective cow after Instagram put out a confusing statement about how it planned to treat users’ photos. (The company blamed the ensuing uproar on imprecise wording and retreated to its original terms of service.) Oh, we love our photos. Fine. Whatever.

Now compare that uproar with the (relative) sound of silence greeting the five-year extension of extraordinary spying powers handed to the National Security Agency. Even in an age when attention deficit disorder seems to be the default mode, this was something else. In the closing days of 2012, President Obama signed into law a bill that lets the government avoid judicial review, leaving the NSA free through the end of his term to intercept international e-mails and phone calls without needing a court order. (The new law is awkwardly named the FISA Amendments Act Reauthorization Act of 2012, and it reauthorizes 2008′s FISA Amendments Act, which modified the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.)

On paper, the new act prevents domestic targeting. Before starting surveillance on Americans, the government is supposed to ask for a warrant from a special 11-judge court of U.S. district judges appointed by the Supreme Court. But that’s little balm to privacy advocates when there’s still no huge barrier to prevent the government from gathering access to Americans’ international communications. In fact, the FISA court possesses only limited supervisory powers to investigate particular surveillance programs, even in cases where the government’s activities are judged to be unconstitutional.

Until the passage of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 Uncle Sam first had to prove to a court that there was probable cause connecting a target to a terror group or a foreign government before the NSA could proceed. And this extension of those 2008 amendments means the NSA has another five years to conduct its business in the way it sees fit.